What's Wrong With Me?!

A question I have asked myself way more times than I could even begin to count!!!

Webster Dictionary defines Anxiety as follows

a. (1) apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness usually over an impending or anticipated ill

(2) medical: an abnormal and overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear often marked by physical signs such as tension, sweating and increased pulse rate, by doubt concerning the reality and nature of the threat, and by self-doubt about one's capacity to cope with it.

b. : mentally distressing concern or interest

c. : a strong desire sometimes mixed with doubt, fear or uneasiness.

Webster Dictionary defines Depression as follows

1 : an act of depressing or a state of being depressed: such as

a : a state of feeling sad : low spirits : melancholy

b (1) : a reduction in activity, amount, quality, or force

(2) biology : a lowering of physical or mental vitality or of functional activity.

Phew! That is a lot of words! So those are the literal definitions of these words, but if you have experienced anxiety or depression, you'll know that there is MUCH more to it than any definition could give you! Being really real here, I'm sharing the below picture that I felt inclined to snap last night during an "episode" so that I could share the real and raw with you.

This was once I had started to try and dry my tears.

So what happened? Why was I crying? My mind.......it can be a dark place that likes to tell me lies. I can know they are lies while also feeling like they are super real. It started because I had a bad headache going on two days. My husband is the kind of amazing human that will pick up all the slack and then tell me I'm the amazing one....so he was doing as he does after work, he was cleaning, doing laundry, doing dishes. I'm so super thankful for him for that because honestly for months those tasks have seemed super overwhelming. The one task I always try to keep up with is cooking dinner. Lately even this mundane task can seem like a huge feat. Last night was one of those nights. I didn't want to cook, but eating out is expensive and we just don't do it often. My husband offered to cook and that's when my mind started to spiral and the tears started to fall. I told him no and proceeded to start cooking while my mind began to spiral. In my mind it feels like he literally does EVERYTHING, picks up all my slack and does it without even complaining. The spiraling thoughts looked a little something like: "I'm a failure", "I don't deserve him", "he deserves someone who can pull their weight", "why am I like this", "what's wrong with me", "why can't I just be normal", "I suck", "I'm a loser and just dead weight that he has to carry around", "I'm tired of feeling like this". I know that these thoughts are depression talking but they are no less real in those moments. Even as I sit here typing this, I am fighting tears because it just feels so real. Then you have anxiety that creeps in on top and starts questioning if I'm even ok, what if I'm not ok and there's something horribly wrong with me, then my mind drifts to my surgery coming up in a couple weeks and I start to worry about all the things that go along with that. My mind literally never rests. Sometimes it's not so bad up there and sometimes I am looking frantically for an escape from my own mind. For anyone who may be reading this and have never experienced these things and you're rolling your eyes while saying "just stop thinking like that, think about something better". You should feel so lucky to have never been in this place. Anxiety and Depression are REAL, they are no joke, and they suck!! I start therapy tomorrow evening, part of me wants to feel hopeful but part of me just feels like it'll be one more thing that won't work because I'm broken and not fixable. I pray that there is a corner in my future that I will turn, and things will start getting better.

Please don't mistake a post like this as attention seeking or looking for sympathy. I've kept the majority of my suffering to myself for a long time for fear of what others think of me. My goal is to just bring awareness and maybe give others suffering in silence the courage to speak up and seek help, knowing that they are not alone!